


Pale As Bone, Pale As Water

by dashery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4049164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>KARKAT: WHAT? WAIT, YOU SAID HE WAS FINE<br/>ROSE: Well, yes, he'll be ok.<br/>ROSE: He just needs some rest.<br/>ROSE: I fear he's feeling a little under the weather.<br/>KARKAT: WHAT WEATHER, WE'RE ON A METEOR<br/>ROSE: Dave is sick, Karkat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pale As Bone, Pale As Water

**Author's Note:**

> Or: "THE HUMAN DISEASE CALLED WHAT THE FUCK ACTUALLY"
> 
> Takes place during the three-year break in the new timeline, a few days after Dream Dirk absconds from the meteor with snoozin' Roxy.

THE HUMAN DISEASE CALLED WHAT THE FUCK ACTUALLY

\-- carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] began trolling turntechGodhead [ TG ] at ??:?? --

CG: DAVE.

It was either a little funny how many of his conversations started exactly like this, these days, or pathetically fucking sad.

CG: DAVE, SERIOUSLY. WHAT THE FUCK? WHERE ARE YOU.  
CG: I KNOW IT'S HUMAN FASHIONABLE FOR SOME REASON TO SHOW UP TO PREVIOUSLY AGREED-UPON APPOINTMENTS WITH NO FUCKING REGARD TO PUNCTUALITY OR OTHER PEOPLE'S SCHEDULES, BUT IT'S BEEN HALF AN HOUR ALREADY.  
CG: ARE YOU ALIVE???

Karkat hit ENTER on that one with an artful, scornful flip to his wrist, as if he were hitting the last staccato note of a chromatic scale. Too bad literally no one was around to appreciate the flourish.

CG: HAS YOUR CASE OF TERMINAL, PAN-DEADENING IDIOCY FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH YOU? DID IT KNOCK OUT YOUR ABILITY TO READ THE SMALL NUMBERS COMMON TO THE MECHANICAL DISPLAYS OF TEMPORALITY THAT CERTAIN MEMBERS OF BOTH OUR SPECIES HAPPEN TO CALL "CLOCKS"?  
CG: OR DID IT KILL SOME OTHER VITAL SENSE  
CG: SHORT-TERM MEMORY, MAYBE? IT'S NOT LIKE WE MADE THESE PLANS THAT LONG AGO, THEY SHOULD STILL OTHERWISE BE FRESH IN YOUR MIND.  
CG: OR MAYBE IT FRIED THE BRAIN CELLS RESPONSIBLE FOR REMINDING YOU YOU NEED TO KEEP BREATHING TO MOUTH OFF AS MUCH AS YOU CONSTANTLY FUCKING DO.  
CG: NOT THAT THAT'S BEEN A PROBLEM LATELY

He frowned--or rather, his expression shifted from overdramatic fury to something else--but he didn't lift his hands from his husktop's alphanumeric input tray.

CG: IT'S KIND OF WEIRD, ACTUALLY. YOU'VE BEEN PRETTY QUIET EVER SINCE YOUR ANCESTORS SHOWED UP.  
CG: WHICH WAS WHY I WAS GLAD YOU AGREED TO WATCH SOME SHIT WITH ME, BECAUSE IT PROVED YOU WEREN'T WALLOWING IN WHATEVER YOUR WEIRD EMOTIONS WERE ABOUT THAT  
CG: EXCEPT NOW YOU'RE NOT HERE  
CG: SO MAYBE YOU ARE?  
CG: BUT IF YOU WERE, I FEEL LIKE YOU'D BE OBLIGATED TO COME ONLINE AND TELL ME YOU WEREN'T FOR SOME KIND OF TRANSPARENT "PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY" AS TO YOUR ACTUAL EMOTIONAL STATE EVEN THOUGH A BLIND CAVE FLAPBEAST COULD SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU.  
CG: SO IT MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE.  
CG: RIGHT?

A beat.

CG: DAVE??

Karkat held his breath, and still nothing from Dave. He rose from his seat, typing frantically now.

CG: OH MY GOD DAVE ARE YOU ACTUALLY DEAD???  
CG: HOLD ON DUDE I'M ON MY WAY

And an answer came.

TG: Calm down, Karkat. Dave's fine.  
CG: DAVE! OH THANK GOD.  
CG: WAIT.

He stiffened in the act of reseating himself, and then instead leaned forward to squint at the screen.

CG: ROSE?  
TG: There, is this better?

With a gusty, put-upon sigh, Karkat sat. No, it wasn't "better" in any way, but at least someone was finally goddamn answering him.

CG: ROSE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON DAVE'S HUSKTOP.  
CG: WE TAGGED IT FOR HIM AND EVERYTHING.  
TG: Yes, the bumper stickers are quite informative.  
TG: I wasn't aware that "Pimpslayer" was his given middle name.  
TG: Or that phallus-shaped stickers came in Rainbow Sparkle.  
CG: ARE YOU IN HIS ROOM?  
TG: Yes.  
CG: WOW

"Wo-o-w," he muttered to himself just to let the sarcasm breathe.

CG: SO I GUESS HE DECIDED TO HAVE A LITTLE "FAMILY" POWER POWWOW DURING OUR STATED MOVIE SLOT?  
CG: WHICH I'D BE FINE WITH, BY THE WAY, IF HE'D JUST SAID SOMETHING  
CG: LIKE hey karkat brb i gotta have some top secret exclusive words with my human "sister", god tier clearance only, sry  
CG: I MEAN IS THAT SO FUCKING HARD??? HE WOULDN'T EVEN HAVE HAD TO GO TO THE EFFORT OF SINCERELY SPELLING OUT "SORRY." I'M THE MOST UN FUCKING BELIEVABLY REASONABLE TROLL ON THIS METEOR, I WOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD IF HE DIDN'T HAVE TIME FOR US.  
CG: I MEAN, FOR US TO WATCH THE MOVIE

Right.

CG: NOT FOR ANY OTHER THING OR PERSON THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN IMPLIED IN THAT PRONOUN  
CG: DISREGARDING THE FACT THAT THAT ASSHOLE IS LITERALLY PRETTY MUCH MADE OF INSANE AMOUNTS OF CHRONOLOGICAL UNITS  
CG: I BET HIS FUCKING BONE CELLS TICK.

_Right._ Anyway.

CG: SO, HEY, ROSE, IF YOU'RE HERE, AND BY HERE I MEAN THERE, WITH DAVE  
CG: DOES THAT MEAN KANAYA'S FREE?  
CG: KANAYA MIGHT LIKE THIS MOVIE  
CG: OR A BRIEF CHAT  
CG: OR, LIKE, A MUTUAL GLANCE AND NOD OF RECOGNITION IN PASSING  
CG: SINCE NO ONE ELSE SEEMS TO BE AVAILABLE FOR SUCH A QUAINT SOCIAL PASTIME.  
CG: HELLO???  
TG: Sorry, Karkat. I would have expounded further on my presence in Dave's room had I not been momentarily called away by more immediate concerns.  
CG: GREAT, GOOD TO HAVE MY SENSE OF RELATIVE IMPORTANCE TO THE UNIVERSE AT LARGE CHECKED ONCE AGAIN. THANKS, ROSE!

Ugh. He palmed his face before his words even hit the screen. What the fuck. Was he always this obnoxiously needy? Karkat hated himself; he was so obvious it turned his stomach. But Rose's reply came before he could form an apology.

TG: Worry not, fearless leader, Dave and I are not enjoying a clandestine wondertwin heart-to-heart over your head, behind your back, or in any other combination of preposition and troll body part.  
TG: Dave isn't currently enjoying much of anything right now.

He stopped, fingers hovering over the _S_ before setting down somewhere else.

CG: WHAT? WAIT, YOU SAID HE WAS FINE  
TG: Well, yes, he'll be ok.  
TG: He just needs some rest.  
TG: I fear he's feeling a little under the weather.  
CG: WHAT WEATHER, WE'RE ON A METEOR  
TG: Dave is sick, Karkat.

What.

TG: It happens.

Karkat stared at his husktop.

TG: I'm sure he hates to miss movie time with his best alien bro, but I really can't advise he push himself. His fever's pretty high.  
CG: HOLY SHIT  
CG: IS HE OK?  
TG: Like I said, he'll be fine with some fluids and sleep.  
TG: He has the constitution of a horse.  
TG: Or, well, the imaginary ideal of a horse. Real horses, I've read, stress themselves out far too easily and are prone to injury and disease just from freaking out too much.  
TG: Which certainly couldn't be the case here, after such a smooth first meeting, if it can be called that, with our pajama-clad alternate teen parents the other day.  
TG: In no way could that little non-encounter with the young version of the man he spent his entire life idolizing and, if I might risk a guess, fearing to admit he feared in some adulating, twisted way, have pushed my dear brother off his stride.

What the fuck was a horse????

CG: FUCK.  
TG: Really, though. He'll be alright.  
TG: He dozed off before I could get any water into him, so I'll try again later.  
TG: Though, now that I think about it, something with actual nutritional content would probably be better. I don't think he's been much up to eating, his throat seemed fairly swollen.  
TG: The Mayor should know which citizens of Can Town still contain chicken soup.

Rose's dainty purple text just kept spinning on and on, filling the little Trollian window with words as she talked to herself. Feeling kind of unreal, Karkat looked down at his manual digits, got them to move over the keys.

CG: YOU'RE SURE HE'LL BE OK  
TG: You have my word as a Seer, Karkat.

He breathed out.

CG: ALRIGHT, OK.  
TG: And, as a Seer, with a Seer's knowledge of what may come, I'll be leaving now to minimize my chance of contracting whatever he has.  
TG: You trolls should be safe, though.  
TG: This is obviously a human disease. I don't think it's communicable to you.  
CG: ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO LEAVE HIM?

Why was that so alarming? Karkat knew, every troll and lusus knew, that you were supposed to ditch the infected, keep them as isolated as possible. You were supposed to get the hell out before fungus or fever could bring down anyone else. It didn't even pay to kill them, for once on Alternia, unless you could burn the bodies clean, and even that might've been an old lusus's tale.

He shook the thought viciously out of his head.

CG: I MEAN, CULTURALLY, WHAT DO HUMANS DO WHEN ONE OF THEIR HERD'S RIPE FOR CULLING LIKE THIS? I THOUGHT YOU HAD MORE OF A SUICIDALLY COOPERATIVE GROUP-OR-NOTHING MENTALITY THAN THAT  
TG: Dave's already asleep. It's not like he's getting anything out of my company, beneficent though it is, now.  
TG: My continued presence here would do little but ensure I join him in gross, snotty misery.  
CG: WOW, YEAH OK, WE DON'T NEED TWO OF YOU XENOFORM GERM FOUNTAINS SPEWING DEATH MUCUS EVERYWHERE.  
TG: I'll check on him periodically. In the meantime, I suppose I'll brave the long-forsaken waters of the Internet, for research's sake.  
TG: I'd like to see about somehow obtaining some children's Tylenol for him, when he's awake to take it. At least then his conscious hours might not be such a trial, for either of us.  
CG: HMM.  
TG: Hmm?

Shit, he hadn't even realized he'd typed that out loud. Or out--whatever. Out-screen? That sounded so dumb.

CG: HMM NOTHING. IT WAS JUST A HMM. CAN'T A GUY MAKE A NOISE INDICATING GENERAL COGITATION, NOT NECESSARILY HAVING TO DO WITH THE MATTER AT HAND AS I'M A BUSY TROLL WITH A SCENT PROBE IN JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS, WITHOUT COMMENT?  
TG: Hmm.

Karkat forced a breath through his nose and pounded the keys a little harder, as if that would make the words sound any more brisk.

CG: WHEN DO YOU THINK HE'LL BE BETTER?  
TG: It's hard to say. These things tend to run their course in a couple days, but I remember certain childhood illnesses occasionally taking longer.  
TG: It certainly felt like an eternity while I was the one to whom it was happening. Eons, really, of punishment, broken only by the tender ministrations of my mother.  
TG: She'd sit with me, when I couldn't sleep, and stroke my hair.

There was a pause so minute, he wasn't sure he would have noticed it if it weren't Rose.

TG: It made me feel better.  
CG: HUH.  
CG: I SEE.  
TG: Did that call for another "hmm"?  
CG: HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

He stabbed each of those _M_ 's out one at a time, though his heart wasn't in the mockery. Rose was actually pretty funny and charming when you got to know her. Kind of an asshole, too. Sometimes he really could see how she and Dave were "related." But he was preoccupied.

TG: I really am leaving now.  
CG: YEAH, FINE. STAY SAFE I GUESS.  
TG: I will.  
CG: THANKS FOR TELLING ME WHAT WAS UP WITH HIM.  
TG: Not at all. After all, it's a well-documented fact among the human scientific communities that nothing helps sickness on its way out than well-meaning nosiness and meddling, particularly on the part of sisters.

\-- turntechGodhead [ TG ] stopped trolling carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] at ??:?? --

\----

Karkat didn't take long to conclude that the long-forsaken waters of the human Internet were long-forsaken for a reason, and if the reason had been utter annihilation by meteor rather than species-wide disgust at the state of things, then it should've been. Who oversaw this shit?

Why was it so hard to figure out what disease someone had based on reported symptoms?

Why couldn't any of these ostensibly sound medical sources fucking agree on any treatment?

Why was _Yahoo! Answers_ , set so promisingly high in his search results, such a festering cesspit of general inanity and links to low-budget, malware-ridden cartoon porn?

"'Well-documented fact' my shriveled left shame globe," Karkat swore under his breath as he finished scrolling through page ten of his findings, shoulders squeezed to the point of cramps after hovering closer and closer to the screen. He leaned back and cracked his neck the way Sollux used to hate, tried to loosen his jaws from their permanent state of annoyed clench. "I don't believe there's any such thing as a human scientific community, and if there is, it's a parade of incompetent amoebas."

But if he had neither majority consensus nor credible professional advice, Karkat had at least found a plurality of sources offering reasonable suggestions, with punctuation in the right places and everything.

His first stop was to the food preparation block. Thankfully, he didn't have to spend too much time there; he found what he needed quickly, as no one had touched it since Gamzee had killed...since Nepeta's death.

Karkat sniffed it, uncertain. But he was pretty sure this couldn't go bad, and besides, he was basically boiling the shit to sterilization anyway. He did what he needed to do to prepare a cup, captchalogued a spare, clean bowl for his next task, and carried the hot cup carefully to the nearest ablution block.

Rose had said Dave had a fever. After freeing the bowl from his sylladex, Karkat filled it with cool water and set to soak one of the tiny hand towels Kanaya must have arranged fussily across the big ones. It had still smelled like laundry, so he knew it was fresh.

Bowl and all went back into his deck.

Third, he swung back by his respiteblock for a second, but only to quickly grab and stow his husktop and a couple game grubs. After all, he had missed his movie slot, and it wasn't like anyone else was going to entertain him in this grey-walled deathtrap streaking across space.

Thus equipped, he made his short way down the hall to Dave's door.

"Hey," he grunted, and knocked on the door with his free hand.

Karkat wasn't sure how long it had been since his conversation with Rose, but Dave must have still been asleep, because there was no answer. He tried again anyway, raising his voice. "Hey, shitstick. If you're conscious, get off your ass and open the door, I don't know your password."

Nada. That was one of Dave's words, vocabulary invading the Alternian territory of his thinkpan like so much else about the humans did. Karkat sighed, then absently pushed the button, just to check. The door slid open.

He blinked, and then realized all in a ferocious hurry, _Rose had left the door unlocked while Dave was defenseless and vulnerable and all, all alone_. It didn't matter that there were no threats on the meteor. The thought crashed down on him like the walls of ice-cold water that rose mountainous on Alternia's shores at the turn of every First Perigee, shocking and disorienting with their sheer weight. Even as it drained back, it left its distant echo within Karkat like the roar within a whelk's shell, a dizzying eddy of seawater strength and breathlessness.

In that moment, Karkat had experienced such a perfect tumult of protective fury, of offense and alarm and the recognition of vulnerability, that he hardly recognized that it was on Dave's behalf and not his own. That he forgot his own lookout, forgot himself entirely. For a second.

Dave, with all his fourteen or, whatever, fifteen human "years" of alien living, wouldn't have understood it, fundamentally wouldn't _get_ it. Or wouldn't get that it was something to get, something significant. Humans were bizarrely forward like that, taking empathy as a given. And that didn't lessen the weight, the possessiveness of the emotion one ounce.

Karkat wouldn't have left this door open.

 _He_ wouldn't have done that to Dave.

But there Dave was, half-levered out of bed and looking at Karkat over his shoulder like he'd missed a cue, like he had a script but had forgotten his line. "Uh," he said intelligently, quietly, and then the door's timer ran out and it whooshed shut in Karkat's face.

He punched the open button again just in time for Dave to school his expression into a tight, straight line. As if he weren't yukking it up on the inside, the fucker.

But Dave didn't so much as chortle. "I was gonna get that," he croaked, and, as if to prove it, he finished pushing himself upright, flapped the bedsheets out of his way.

Karkat flashed into action. "Lie your diseased corpse right the fuck back down, asshole," he snapped, chopping his free hand through the air like an axe. Dave sat, mattress bouncing with the motion, as Karkat marched to his side, set the hot mug he carried down without, somehow, sloshing its contents all over the end table.

He recognized the thin shadow between Dave's eyebrows as a frown. "What's that."

"Boiled leaf juice," Karkat answered shortly. He grabbed the covers, lifted them--dislodged the husktop sitting on top of them, but it was in the center of the bed and didn't fall, thank fuck--and gestured for Dave to get underneath with a brusque sweep of hand. "Tea's supposed to help, I don't know, soothe your inflamed tonsils or something. Or maybe the heat kills the bacteria to death? I'd've guessed the taste."

Dave's mouth scrunched to one dubious side and Karkat rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "I put, like, five cubes of sugar in it. It probably tastes just like your overly saccharine fruit piss now, I know you miss that shit."

"If you could not compare apple juice to piss, I'd all sorts of appreciate it, man," Dave muttered. But he took the edge of the covers from Karkat and obediently slid his legs beneath them, pulled the quilt up to his chin, and curled on his side. The edge of his pillow pushed his shades slightly askew, but Dave didn't do more to fix them than turn his chin a little, give up. A muted sound caught in his throat like it was too much trouble to properly clear it.

It was Karkat's turn to frown. "Bro. You really don't sound too good."

Dave was obliged to lift his head in order to share the look of pure sourness he wore with Karkat, but he didn't hold it long. His head thumped back into the pillows and, without knowing how, Karkat could tell his eyes were probably closed. "I sound," Dave said, and snuffled, "like shit. Rose told me so basically all night."

Snrrf. The whole underside of Dave's nose was rubbed pink, and it stood out against the pallor of his skin. Someone had pulled a wastebasket right next to the bed; it was three-quarters full with used tissues, but Dave didn't reach to the nearby box for another.

Karkat dumped the tissue box in the space between Dave's arms and his face, then carefully made more space atop the end table. "Huh. Rose stayed with you all night?" he asked, wondering how he could possibly be surprised. Of course Rose wouldn't have mentioned it.

Dave seemed to realize it, too, and his line of sight shifted up and away, towards the headboard, before he obscured even that by taking a tissue to blow his nose. It wasn't as loud a noise as Karkat would've figured. But he and Rose were like that; as well as they knew each other, as long as they'd been friends, he could tell by the way Dave still pressed at the word "sister" and the way Rose addressed it hardly at all how awkward they still were about a biological sameness whose social significance Karkat found incomprehensible.

"Yeah," Dave said when he finished blowing his nose, though he sounded no less congested nor less hoarse. "I guess she left like an hour or two ago?" Dave was always vague about time, like he played its game so completely he could pay less attention to it than breathing, but it wasn't like him to sound so unsure. Like he _couldn't_ keep track of it rather than not needing to. "But I told her she could leave the door open so she wouldn't have to keep waking me up every time she came to check my vitals."

"Oh." Well, now Karkat felt like a moron. His swell of righteous anger from earlier washed away in shame, but the memory of it--the knowledge that the swell had happened, and the weirdly warm and evasive feelings he had about that--clung, stubbornly, like a barnacle on his soul. He decaptchalogued the bowl of water he'd brought and busied himself pressing excess wetness out of the towel between his palms. "Well, she's going to be a while, probably. I think, something about medicine? Not that I know how the hell she's going to find any in the literal middle of nowhere. Why don't you stop fucking talking and go back to sleep, you sound like you're breathing through razor blades someone fished out of a hemorrhaging septic tank."

Dave looked for a second like he might throw his newly-wadded tissue into Karkat's pie hole rather than the trash. "I've been sleeping all _day_ ," he complained--but not strongly, Karkat wasn't wrong about his voice--and rolled onto his back, let the tissue drop from his fingers into the waste basket. "It's like y'all don't even miss my ill stylings."

The towel slapped across his forehead with a satisfyingly wet smack. "Then at least shut up for two minutes and drink your goddamn tea. You're making _my_ fleshy laryngeal tube hurt, fuck."

It took a moment or two of wary consideration, but, to Karkat's surprise, Dave acceded. "Yeah, okay." With a hand to the damp towel to keep it in place, Dave sat halfway up and took the mug. He tried to sniff at it before he realized how useless that was. "What's in it? Like, what kind of tea."

"Chameow--" Karkat stopped, tongue raised, and then cleared his throat. "Chamomile."

"What's that?"

"Fuck if I know."

"All right." Dave stared at the tea for a little longer, blew on it delicately, and then took a tiny sip.

Karkat watched. "What's it taste like?"

Shrug. "Dunno, man. I can't taste shit right now. What's it smell like?"

"Flowers, I guess? Something planty. Not much, but not totally awful."

"Then that's probably what it tastes like."

Dave finished the rest of the tea without saying anything, which just went to show that either his throat really was hurting him or his fever was worse than it looked. Both, probably, from the way he swallowed so carefully, from how he clung to the cool comfort of the towel. His skin looked...weird. Pale, but Dave always looked pale compared to the rest of them. Even compared to Rose--she glowed, somehow, with a warmth like their Earth's sun on Jade's island sands, even now after all this time in the Furthest Ring. Dave had tried to explain about melanin once, about how diurnal, furless creatures like humans had evolved for life under the sun.

He, of course, had only lightened through their journey in the dark. But his skin now looked waxy, damp with sweat, and the hollows under his eyes almost as prominent as Karkat's own.

Karkat turned abruptly, pushed the wastebasket aside so he could sit on the floor against the side of Dave's bed, and brought out his husktop.

"What're you doing?"

Dave sounded nonplussed.

"What does it look like I'm doing, douchenozzle? I've got shit to do, as always."

His back was to Dave, so he couldn't tell what expression he was making. "Uh, but..."

"Rose said I couldn't catch it," Karkat told him, gruff and defensive.

It bought him a silence as Dave studied the back of his head, if he could see even that over the edge of his bed. Silence was good. Silence meant that Dave wasn't asking _why_ Karkat was so clearly choosing to stick around even if there wasn't a good _why not_. When Karkat heard the scrape of the mug's bottom on the end table as Dave put it back down, he knew Dave was just grateful enough--hoped he was grateful enough, and not something else--not to make it weird. Not to ask.

It was still weird, but at least they didn't have to tumble down an endless scree of even more awkward words.

And the wordless peace continued as Dave resettled himself in bed. Karkat wasn't doing anything on his computer, not really, just clicking from one program to another while he listened to the rustling of Dave getting comfortable. A shift against cotton. Sniffles and stifled coughs. Another quiet click, one he couldn't place for a while, but he was staring at Trollian now and all the names he hadn't had the heart to delete from his chumproll.

He almost jumped when it pinged at him.

\-- turntechGodhead [ TG ] started pestering carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] at ??:?? --

TG: oh look at this it seems as if theres always been a way for me to talk without flogging my germ lacerated vocal folds further with the lashes of my words  
TG: take two of THAT and call me in the morning

Karkat snorted.

CG: HAHAHA, "OH SHIT." IT APPEARS MY WELL-REASONED MEDICAL ADVICE HAS BEEN "OWNED" BY SOME DOUCHEBAG WHO COULDN'T SHUT HIS FACE IF HIS LIFE DEPENDED ON IT!  
TG: it happens to the best of us  
TG: so werent we gonna watch a movie today

He was glad, for some reason that had the same fluttery, elusive warmth as his feelings before, that Dave couldn't see him smile.

They couldn't quite get the movie to play in sync on both screens, so Dave muted his while Karkat cranked his speakers up as loud as they could go, and it was fine. They were watching _Hot Fuzz_ , Dave's choice this time, and Karkat relaxed as they shot commentary back and forth through their computers. Distracted, Dave didn't sniff or cough so much, but around the two-thirds mark, Karkat noticed his repartee was losing steam fast.

"You okay?" he asked, turning for the first time since he'd sat.

"Yeah," Dave replied, but he was quiet, his voice way softer than before.

"How's your towel?" Karkat pushed his husktop off his lap and sat up on his knees, cursing sotto voce at the stiffness in his back and legs from sitting in a bad position too long. He wasn't even seven yet, he was too young to creak like that.

Dave tried to say, "'S fine," but Karkat was already removing the cloth from his forehead. It was barely damp and warm with Dave's heat besides, and Karkat dipped it in the water again. "It's gonna get my shades wet," Dave mumbled in protest.

Karkat scoffed. "So take them off, numbnuts."

That wasn't one of Karkat's words. Not Dave's, either, he realized as he let the towel drip extra water back into the bowl.

They both hesitated, Karkat kneeling before the end table, Dave with a hand by his temple.

And Dave was the one who broke the silence. "John gave me these." He touched the corner of the sunglasses' frame, ran his fingertip down the arm so they wobbled on his nose. The shades were too big for his face, or had been, when they'd first met. They'd made him look like a bug. "A while ago. For my birthday."

Karkat nodded, stiff and wide-eyed, not looking at Dave at all.

"Before that, I used to wear ones like my Bro's."

He looked over, and Dave was sliding them off, folding them closed with closed eyes.

"Here, don't smudge them. They're fuckin' collectible."

He'd read a hundred, a million stories like this: A troll takes off his glasses and suddenly he's beautiful, suddenly she's everything you want her to be, you can look into their eyes and see right down to the depths of their pitiable, their cruel, their love-twisted souls. But that wasn't how Karkat felt at all, as Dave handed him his shades without looking. Time didn't stop. It was as easy a thing as breathing.

Except it wasn't easy, not really--breathing or taking the shades. Dave looked like a whole different person without the dark lenses and curves to break his pale, narrow face. His lashes were fuller, longer even than Rose's, but so light he could hardly see them, and they flickered uneasily over the sleepless, unhealthy shadows beneath his eyes, like he knew Karkat was staring at him and didn't know how not to make it a big deal.

"Take a picture," Dave murmured, but didn't finish with _it'll last longer_.

Karkat just put the shades aside on the near side of the end table, where Dave could reach them easily. "There, they're right there," he said, and he'd never heard his own voice so strange. Gruff and businesslike without being either of those things at all. Soft.

Dave half-opened one eye to check, and Karkat could see how exhausted and sick he was in the glassy shine, in the weakness of the gesture. "You still dizzy?" he asked, aware Dave hadn't admitted to being so in the first place.

"...Mmh." Both eyes were open, now, the only color in his face besides his reddened nose, and so much brighter than that for all they were half-lidded.

Dripping towel in one hand, nothing in his right, Karkat sat, lightly, on the very edge of Dave's bed.

_It made me feel better._

With his dry, empty right hand, Karkat reached up and, gently, as if he were tracing ancient spiderweb, brushed the hair from Dave's forehead--with one finger, not touching skin, as they both held their breaths.

Dave let it go first, a near-silent, shuddery exhalation.

"Okay?" asked Karkat, unsure whether Dave really knew what he was asking. Unsure whether he did himself.

Eyes opened again, looked at Karkat. After a breath, Dave nodded.

"Okay. I'm just gonna--I'm gonna see," said Karkat, whatever that meant. Dave just closed his eyes and, with a breath, let him.

A wave rocking him to his core, the weight of the ocean, responsibility and the cherishing of it. Karkat swallowed and scooted just that much closer. As carefully as before, he combed Dave's fine, pale hair out of the way and laid his hand over the damp, feverish forehead. "Yeah, you're hot."

"Uh-huh," Dave replied, and one corner of his mouth quirked upward.

It didn't ruin the moment at all. Karkat just huffed quietly, removed his hand, and replaced it with the cool relief of the towel. As he watched, Dave's whole face relaxed, and Karkat felt something very small, very light, almost unbearably warm tumble weightlessly into the pit of his stomach and burn there, light him up from inside.

He said nothing of it, just kept softly, carefully running his fingers through Dave's hair.

"Which one is this?" Dave asked, barely audible.

Karkat stopped, dark hand against Dave's bone-white hair, his fair skin. "What?"

He blinked his eyes open, but even when the little shadow furrowed between his eyebrows, Dave couldn't seem to find the answer to his nonsensical question in Karkat's face, and he sighed. "Never mind. Doesn't matter."

But he almost snapped to attention when Karkat took his hand away. "Are you going to leave?"

And even if Dave didn't know what Karkat had been asking, even if he couldn't give the gesture the lifetime, the lifetimes of context Karkat could, he did know--they both knew--what Dave was asking now. What he revealed with the question, so vulnerable, so shorn of his stupid words.

Karkat rolled his eyes.

"No, dumbass." But his voice was still low and warm. "It's fine. Go to sleep."

And if Karkat sat there for the rest of the day, husktop balanced precariously in his lap when he was practically falling off the edge of the bed himself--if Karkat was perfectly content to do so, smiling with a warmth he could barely hold--no one would know.

Because Dave went out like a sweet, pale light.


End file.
